CODEWITHSUNDEEP
dockerconsul
wiwa1978
wiwa1978

Reputation: 2687

Docker and Consul by example: need clarification

I'm learning Docker-Swarm with Consul and found some issues I don't really understand. Basically, I created a Docker-Swarm cluster (node-01 and node-02) with Consul Sevice Discovery. I then run a multi-container application (Express app with Mongo) and I can see it is running on node-02. In order to run it, I have to go in and find the IP address of my node-02 and then open the browser.

It works fine, it's just that I was expecting that I could just go to some virtual IP (or DNS) and that it the Consul service (or Swarm) would then translate it to the correct IP address of node-02 in this example.

Next item is that when I log into Consul web UI, I was expecting to see the nodes under the 'nodes' menu, but that seems not to be the case. I was also expecting to get an overview of the 'applications' or 'services' I was running on the node-01 and node-02, but that is also not the case.

My questions are:

  1. Can someone explain why I would need to manually find out on which node in the cluster my app is running. Cannot imagine this is done in larger deployments.
  2. Can someone address why I don't see the 'nodes' and 'services' in the Consul UI?

Note: I tried to be as short as possible though I have been documenting the full setup in a blog post (with screenshots) for those who want to see more details. Go to blog post

Upvotes: 2

Views: 254

Answers (2)

Vijay
Vijay

Reputation: 4465

Check this: https://github.com/vmudigal/microservices-sample

                     Microservices Sample Architecture

Upvotes: 2

Auzias
Auzias

Reputation: 3798

Question 1

I would like to access the service without having to use the Swarm agent's IP address

Solution

It is feasible, you just need to start up a reverse proxy such as nginx in a container (here are the official nginx images). At the start up of this container use the option --link with the name of the application. Thus the IP address of this container will added in the file /etc/hosts of the reverse proxy container (remember to use --name and --hostname). Run this reverse proxy container on a specific node. So the solution to get rid of the IP address issue is to deploy another container on a specific node (and then specific IP address)? Yes! But using --link will make this issue scalable ;)

Question 2

I was expecting to see the nodes under the 'nodes' menu, but that seems not to be the case.

What you do mean? What did you expect? Do you need to query the k,v-storage DB?

Upvotes: 3

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